Help Choosing / Getting Started

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hey folks, I’ve spoken with a number of devs, and am getting about 1,000 different answers depending on who I ask. We run a VOD site which is a video library for a company, all users are internal and need a password to access the site.

What I need to do is to begin to use ABR for this site, and I understand Wowza streaming engine is the solution. We currently host and deploy the files using JW player as just a single format/resolution mp4 file, and the files are currently stored on Rackspace Cloud Sites (CDN) I’m really looking for some guidance here:

A few questions:

  1. The source files are large high resolution video files (.mov or .mp4) and they would of course need to be transcoded. I understand the system can transcode, but I’m concerned about uploading hundreds of files that are ~500Mb each. is there a way to encode the files using some offline tool in preparation for the ABR delivery? or does it not work that way?

  2. cost wise, is my best optoin to set up a Rackspace cloud server for this and run Wowza on it? I notice wowza has a partnership/information available for this, but It is very unclear whether I need a Wowza license for this or if it is all included? I’m looking here: https://www.wowza.com/products/streaming-engine/deployment-options/rackspace

  3. On that same point, In normal circumstances, less than 5 people watch any given file at the same time. The files are 30 second TV commercials. What server weight / performance would you think I’d need for this? Again, this is strictly VOD, and I just need the ABR functionality.

Thanks in advance folks, hopefully I"m not asking too much!

-Will

2

  1. Wowza cannot do transcoding of files at the moment, only live content. You can use an external tool to transcode files in advance, but it is important to create renditions which are properly keyframe-aligned. Take a look at https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-encode-video-on-demand-content

  2. I haven’t used wowza on rackspace, but from what I can see, you need to purchase a license. If your content is stored on Rackspace, then it makes sense to have wowza on Rackspace as well.

  3. Are you saying that you have at most 5 parallel connections at any given time (in total)? If so, then you can go with minimum configuration, which is “CPU: Single quad core, 3.00 GHz or better RAM: 4GB Disk: 2 or more in RAID 0 (striping) Network: 1Gbps Ethernet”. You could go even lower than that, and it should work, especially with such a small load, but for a production setup I’d go with the recommended minimum.